Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates generally to remote detection of objects and more particularly in one exemplary aspect to computer apparatus and methods for detecting objects using reverse correlation ranging.
Description of Related Art
Object detection may be of use in a variety of applications including assisted vehicle navigation, autonomous robotic navigation, home automation, classification, and/or other applications. In some applications of robotic navigation it may be of benefit to detect objects remotely with a given margin of time in order to, e.g., execute a maneuver.
Some existing ranging technologies may be susceptible to interfere with one another. For example, two traditional sonars operating at the same time at in the same frequency band may not function correctly due to cross interference.
Additional deficiencies are that existing ranging technologies are often pulsed, as in not operated continuously in time, and as such detection of obstacles between pulses is not possible. For example, a sonar generates a chirp and then waits for the echo, depending on the strength of the chirp the amount of time between chirps can be 100 milliseconds (ms) or longer.
Further, existing technologies normally are narrow band, and as such some objects are not detectable at a specific frequency but would be detected using broad band transmissions.
Accordingly, there is a salient need for improved sensing apparatus and methods for detection of objects and/or ranges to objects.